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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Circle of Life

I was provided a ticket to see the show tonight for rehearsal purposes (I had purchased the other ones - snafu and long story).

The whole show is worth seeing just to watch opening number, "The Circle of Life". The costumes, puppets, movements, the African singing, the beautiful colors of the sunrise, the giraffes on stilts...stunning. This is probably the 6th or 7th time I've seen the show and I have seen the opening number on the YouTube clip of the Tony Awards from 1999(?) a million times and STILL, I was moved to tears tonight.

That's what theatre is all about, my friends. The breathless anticipation before the curtain, the heart-stopping brilliance of a line, a song, a look, an energy, a relationship. It doesn't come to fruition in every show, but there is usually a special moment in most shows. That's what brings me back each time - the possibility that it will HAPPEN. It did tonight. It was a thrill. And then I realize that I get to participate in the show and hope that someone who accesses the show through American Sign Language has that moment at some point in their theatre experience that night. I think "The Lion King" is a show that transcends interpretation - it is so visually rich, I imagine that the Deaf/Hard of Hearing audience has almost as many ways to access that "moment" in this show as the hearing audience does (and usually, none of that to do with the interpretation - I'm good with that).